Attachment link is not being added into the triggered notification

RahulK

Hi all, I am trying to create a workflow which gets triggered when rows are added and when an attachment is added. In the 'Action' I have selected to alert people with a message that includes the Attachment, link to sheet and 5 fields. But in the triggered notification only the fields and the link to the sheet are there. Why is it excluding the attachment?

Debbie Sawyer

Oh - this is odd.

Can you show a picture of the sheet, showing where the attachment is?

RahulK

Sure Debbie,

Here it is.

Debbie Sawyer

That looks fine to me.

I am just doing a little testing to see if I can replicate this issue.

Did you add the row via a form, or directly to the sheet?

RahulK

That also perplexed me, as I also tried different methods. It used to work fine earlier. It works fine when I select the 'Links to sheet and all the fields' option but not with specific fields.

To your 2nd question: The row was added via a form

Debbie Sawyer

Is there any chance you would let me zoom with you to see this issue?

my email address is debbie.sawyer@smarterbusinessprocesses.com all my testing is working and I can't see any global setting to stop attachments working...

It is really odd!

Debbie Sawyer

Do you think your local IT department have done anything to stop attachments from Smartsheet?

RahulK

Update: 'Links to sheet and all the fields' is also not providing Attachment now.

However, other workflows are working perfectly fine. Below is a screenshot I got from my colleague. She received a notification of the same row and the attachment is there.

Debbie Sawyer

How very odd

I still have been unable to reproduce this for you.

It works fine for me...

Is your colleague using the same email app as you? I.e. is one of you using gmail and the other outlook or something like that?

RahulK

I think I have figured out the reason.

I was triggering the notification with the 'Run' function for the workflows. Since this is not getting triggered by the attachment itself, the attachment is not included in the notification. When I ran the other workflow in which the attachment was present in the notification for my colleague, it did not present the attachment for me. So my guess is it has to be triggered by the attachment itself and not manually.

Will update again if anyone raises another request through forms.

@Debbie Sawyer Please confirm if you ran the workflow manually and still got the desired results.

Debbie Sawyer

Ahhh - well done! Goodness me!

There is a note on the help file that says the attachment will only attach to the notification if it is added to the sheet at the point of the trigger, so using the Run now feature rather than the trigger box does make sense that it doesn't attach, although I didn't know that it wouldn't attach if you use the Run now option - so thank you for highlighting that!

And.... back to normal! ha ha

@Genevieve P.

Hi Genevieve, I have been commenting on an issue today and RahulK believes they have got to the root cause of the issue. It would be really great if Smartsheet could update this paragraph in the following help page if the root cause identified here is accurate. I appreciate the help file was probably created before the Run Now feature for testing automations!

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2479256-customize-the-content-of-your-alerts-and-requests

Comments and attachments in alerts

For alert actions in time-based workflows, comments and attachments will never be included. For alert actions in change-based workflows, they‘ll only appear when the attachment or comment is modified at the time of the trigger event. Attachments and comments that existed prior to the trigger event are not included.

For update request and approval request actions, all new and existing attachments and comments are included.

So here it might be worth editing to say that if you are testing the workflow with the Run Now feature, the attachment will not attach!

Well done

Kind regards

Debbie

Genevieve P.

Hey @Debbie Sawyer

Thanks for the tag! 🙂

You are both correct - the Run Now feature actually skips the Trigger block, which means that the attachment isn't counted as "the trigger" so it won't be included in the alert.

See:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2482707-manually-run-workflow

Cheers,

Genevieve